Sony Clie N770 CU retro review

I haven’t written a retro review for a while so I thought I should write one about the PDA that started PDA-247, or Clie World as it was called back then. A few weeks back I cleared out my garage and there it was, my original Sony Clie N770 CU in all its glory albeit somewhat dusty after years of loneliness in a cold and dark environment. Amazingly it still turned on after I charged it for a couple of hours and so I got a chance to relive some memories when a high resolution screen was an incredible achievement in the Palm OS world.

We all know the story of this Clie. Palm was king of the PDA hill and was producing mediocre devices that showed a complete lack of innovation- only one PDA had a colour screen and at this time the company was concentrating squarely on personal information management and nothing else. Some developers were creating interesting apps for the platform, but the vast majority of Palm users used them as a diary, contact manager and little else.

And then Sony licensed the operating system and produced the N770. It changed everything in the small, but growing Palm OS industry; Palm got a needed kick up the backside, we realised that PDAs could be used for more than just serious stuff and a buzz grew in what was seen as a nerdy section of the computer industry. We didn’t realise it at the time, but this Clie was likely the very first device that was recognised by people outside of the core PDA fans and one that would lead to every platform to look closer at what a PDA could achieve. Some would argue that it was also the device that caused manufacturers ever since to squeeze as many features as possible in a mobile device at the expense of battery life and practicality.

When I walked into PC World and saw the Clie I was stunned by what the sales person demonstrated to me. It was so unlike any other Palm OS PDA and just blew me away, especially that glorious high resolution screen. I was not a follower of the market at the time and so had no idea such a PDA existed, but within a week I had started Clie Planet and was cook-a-hoop with my new purchase and my new site. I remember well excitedly telling my wife that I had over 200 hits on one day and it seemed like a massive amount at the time.

The N770 offered not just a high resolution screen, but a set of headphones which was also unheard of at the time. Suddenly music could be played on a PDA and at a quality previously unheard of. The inclusion of expansion card support opened this up further even if it was only compatible with the much maligned Sony Memory Sticks. There was a genuine realisation that the PDA was no longer just about organisation; photos could be viewed in perfect clarity, music tracks were accessible via a clever software interface and advanced gaming was now possible.

In 2010 it may not seem like much, but all those years ago it surely was. The build quality was phenomenal and it could take anything you threw at it, the buttons were as solid as nails and the jog dial was a revelation to those of us used to under screen keys and styluses. It all worked perfectly together and produced a PDA that made what Palm produced at the time look puny and underpowered in almost every way. It had its problems such as the way expansion cards were supported, but it was a leap forward that meant most users felt very positively about the device.

It is one of the few PDAs that would still work perfectly today and mine is still working quite well. Sony didn’t succeed in the PDA market despite showing the kind of innovation others could only dream of and once it left Palm fell back into its old ways and here we are today with neither lighting up the smartphone market.

Sony missed an opportunity by not hanging in long enough, but for a while there it produced some of the very best mobile devices we have ever seen and the N770 CU is a classic example.